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How Does A WHOLE Coach Smell Of Scalp: A Review Of Finn & Fish (The Wash Cycle)

I might have harped on in a wide variety of earlier posts (hell, last year’s posts at this rate) about dipping into Irish mythology for comic book inspiration, and how in my addictive and virulent opinion the market has seen some hits, misses and sometimes reaching the epitome of The ‘Meh’ Zenith. I am not linking back to key examples of transplanting mythological themes into a dodge and burn rendered, techno-Yokes Dublitroplis again, however I’m taking an alternate route with the next example I’ll review.

… so alternate, it falls down the same staircase where Velvet was last left toothless and comatose, but goes on to tumble to the very bottom, blood farting dislodged body fat on impact. Finn & Fish is an unholy wreck of a tome, with such an intent of pissing into the eyes of Irish mythology it might as well be bound in a discarded pre-tax Dunnes Stores plastic bag as a symbol of nationalist pride. While throwing the surrendered tax pennies like shrapnel into your eyeballs. This is as close as you’ll get to the High King Horse Aids Experience.

The author (Yoors T. Rooley) depicts Irish hero Finn SupermacChumaill Chips as a misanthropic pencil dick moaning about the lack of his entitled lot in life, a pisscloud so bereft of joy and charisma that he comes with a close up shot of a Virgin Mary statuette on a mantelpiece set in the Seventies. Finn, who looks like exhibit A of a crippling meth addiction with pigtails, lives in a pseudo Celtic abode with Sabh, a hyper doe-human whose original mythological plot point was to show up, drop Oisin out her womb, and vanish. (Oisin himself appears as an adult naked metrosexual during odd BETCH PLEASE intermissions where he leans on the fourth dolmen.) Finn’s head is inhabited by Salmon, a sassy yelping queefnugget made flesh, but is also the Salmon from that one legend. Which Finn spends the first issue recounting to absolutely fucking no one but the people who already know about it, because how else do you fit a legend in a limited page count?

The rest of the book is either Finn’s current quest and/or backstory recounted with the real Boyne Valley experience, with the spirit of a delinquent student screaming MIIIIIINGEEEEEERRRR in your face while grilling a sandwich behind a radiator. He saves a whole village from wispy fire fairy Aileen by sticking poisoned crap in his face to keep himself awake during Aileen’s song something something something. The next two chapters are Finn and Salmon encountering a tall, dark and mysterious creep who enjoys turning various animals into scene kids and moé girls. They escape with just the context of Sabh’s backstory, only for Oisin to retcon the plot. Because he’s a deity now under the influence of Morrigan, or something.

Gnostics believe that the Demiurge creates flawed things in His own flawed image, and Finn & Fish is physical proof of His eternal nihilistic hell called ‘reality’.This shrieking mess is a projectile bum spill of acid and that orange peel marmalade, firing on all cannons with a hackneyed manga overtone and inconsistent inking methods. Even the first issue ends with Salmon addressing the audience, apologising in advance if another issue doesn’t come along. Witty way to address the, eh, nudge nudge wink wink regular print run problems of the comic industry here, Rooley. You fucking arsecough.

If Finn & Fish was a toilet, the TSS bacteria culture inside the sanitary bin next to it would become sentient and revolt against thetoilet’s E. coli culture in the name of good taste. If Finn & Fish was a supermarket brand pizza, the scalding cheese would slip onto your chest on first slice, cauterising a bubbling fleshy triangle where your salty tears were seconds ago. If Finn & Fish was a novel, half the pages would be printed using a typewriter ribbon on a knuckleduster tied to a lawnmower. Floating in the fifth dimension. If Finn & Fish was contemporary art, it would be Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ but with a fresh new Dutch Oven in it to waft at eyewatering visitors every day.

If you see this shit being hawked in your local comic store, call a priest and burn everything around it, even the store and people in it. If the smoke smells faintly of shampoo, that’s probably a first edition print from Arcadecon. whoops